Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.

You don’t mind when he stares at you.” Cecil jerked his head toward Eldric. "He doesn’t stare,” I said. “He looks.

That’s where proper stories begin, don’t they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth. I love you. I believe it. I believe I am loveable. How can something as fragile as a word build a whole world?

I hated myself, but I also loved myself in a hateful way.

There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable. Take Othello. He was neither right nor reasonable, and Desdemona ended up dead. I wouldn't mind Leanne ending up dead. I wouldn't mind exploding her into fireworks of peacock and pearl.

The beach has a language of its own, with its undulating ribbons of silt, the imponderable hieroglyphs of bird tracks. The receding waves catch on innumerable holes in the sand. Bubbles form and fade. A new language, with a new alphabet.